They are trash that’s been soaked in gasoline and tossed into a blazing tire fire.

It’s by design, to be honest. They have enough rookies to make you think for a second, “Is this a Sam Hinkie joint?”

Trust the process, they will.

It obviously frames everything that happened good tonight for the Canucks. They wiped out a bad team on a bad night with bad goaltending.

You know it, I know it. Great.

Of course, it should temper how anyone views this 4-1 win.

It should not, however, change how you feel about Bo Horvat who is emerging as something of an offensive force on this team.

At least, he has been that this calendar year. Horvat has 43 points in the 64 games he’s played in 2016. Henrik Sedin, by comparison, has put up 35 in 58.

While we’ve all been arguing about deployment and ozone starts and Jake Virtanen, Horvat has quietly taken over as the team’s best goal scorer and its top point producer too.

Can it last? Not sure. It’s a ton to ask for a 21-year-old who the coach is convinced is a shutdown specialist.

But that 43 points in 64 games is a 55-point pace.

Do you know what a 55-point player is in the NHL?

He’s a first liner.

BEST TIMING

The Canucks Army made an impassioned plea this week, urging the Canucks to start moving the rock on a Horvat extension.

This seems like a no-brainer. The NHL is a young man’s league, and Horvat is one of the best young players the Canucks have in their possession. By the sounds of it, though, the Canucks haven’t started negotiations yet.

There are times when you will leaf back into some old post from Canucks Army, and say “damn, why didn’t anyone listen to these guys?”

This feels like one of those times.

Hey, if you want to bet against Horvat this season, more power to you.

But a 50-point season could mean an AAV in the $4-million range. Sixty points and … well, let’s not go there, because it’s not fair to put those kinds of expectations on him yet.

The Canucks may be thinking about something along the lines of Galchenyuk’s two-year, $5.6 million extension, that’s if they’re not quite ready to go all in on Horvat as offensive pace setter.

But Galchenyuk is about to break the bank on his next extension.

If Van is all in, just remember Barkov signed a 6-year contract for $35.4 million in a 59-point season for Florida.

So for the Canucks, now would be a pretty good time to get those Horvat negotiations moving.

BEST MOVE

You know Horvat is playing with confidence when you see him doing things like this:

BEST PLAY

Sbisa and Baertschi make a couple of sweet passes on this back check, which is what sets up Horvat on that third goal.

BEST THREAD

BEST HASH TAG FOR THIS SBISA SEASON

BEST QUESTION

@botchford How is the arrival of Bo as the '16-'17 Canucks scoring leader – a Sedin since '07 – the least addressed story line of the year?

He has seven points in seven games, and we’re left to wonder, are we living in a Burrows Renaissance age?

Sure, he’s not always going to be playing the Coyotes, but he did get two in New York against the Rangers which started this run.

It’s way early, and we will see how long this lasts, but so far he’s been something of a game changer on that Horvat line.

I would be interested to see some analysis of how much of an impact.

Would Horvat’s and Baertschi’s numbers look appreciably better if Burrows had been on their line all season?

BEST DID YOU NOTICE?

The play on the Canucks second goal was set up when BFG made the 6-foot-4, 200-pound plus Lawson Crouse was made to look like he was on the take-a-kid-to-work program.

Tryamkin makes it look so easy there. It is not.

Stecher found himself in almost the exact situation with Crouse later in the game.

He did not fare so well.

BEST REACTION

So you think it’s all about brute force with Tryamkin?

You would be wrong.

Tobias Rieder has wheels. He also thought he had a breakaway in this one, until BFG brilliantly sweeps away the puck from him without taking a penalty.

It really is a great play from Tryamkin.

The Coyotes broadcast didn’t see it that way.

“How is that not a penalty? My goodness.”

Maybe because Tryamkin got to the puck first?

“Tobias Rieder was gonzo. There is no way he didn’t win that foot race.”

Think we just watched it and he didn’t win.

Just saying.

“The Vancouver Canucks just got away with one.”

Well, if they did, they were due, actually.

Let’s watch it again to be sure.

No, dude, that’s just a great play.

BEST CC

You had me at “Man”

BEST TAG LINE TO A HUGE HORVAT NIGHT

BEST GHOSTS OF DRANCER

With The GDD, The Great Disappearance of Drancer, we have been left with significant voids to fill in both overdressed media members and the art of self back patting.

Ghosts, if you will.

“I don’t know what to do!” Scrooge could say.

Well, a couple gave it a go.

JD tried to remedy the former. Given a chance to cover the Canucks skate on Monday, it has been learned he arrived entirely suited up.

Damn straight he did. Walking in the footsteps of that overlord, who wouldn’t?

But I did get reports that some heckling pushed JD to remove his tie. Now he did deny this, claiming he wasn’t bullied, and the tie rem0val was simply about comfort.

I do hope so.

Because when Drancer does finally re-emerge, there will be stories told about him, like the time he was ripped for being overdressed so he changed into a tuxedo and one he had made link by link, and yard by yard.

Or something like that. It’s been so long, the memory fades.

Either way, the guy stuck to his guns.

The back patting isn’t quite as easy as overdressing. There’s a certain art to it. The best self-stroking is done with subtlety, and that was captured by nobody tonight when it was revealed he actually predicted Loui Eriksson’s 2016-17 season way back in July.

There’s a good lesson in there. The best back patting is done when you let others do the heavy lifting.

And it helps us honour Drancer in our hearts, and try to keep it all the year. Remember, he will live with us in the Past, the Present, and the Future.

BEST THE PAT-CAST REFERENCE

When you’re nobody and you’re hot, you’re hot.

wow 2016 just keeps getting worseRIP1. Bowie 2. Prince3. Harambe4. the Gudbranson trade storyall taken from us way too soon@botchford

The Canucks can’t get caught waiting too long to make some moves at the deadline. I mean, not again.

So now is the time to start making your recommendations for the ’17 trade deadline.

This is a pretty good start right here.

BEST LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE TO YOUR FANS

BEST IRONY

With the emergence of Matthew Tkachuk, I have been surveying smart people around the league, those who work in the NHL and cover it, to see what they think about the Canucks choice to draft Olli Juolevi instead.

Tkachuk has been the surprise of the 2016 draft. He is out-producing what even his biggest supporters thought he’d be able to do and as several said:

“No one saw this coming.”

At least, not this soon from him.

Nearly unanimously people still said the Canucks made the right choice, that there were enough questions about Tkachuk that Juolevi was the right call.

Of course, this isn’t going to matter much if he scores 20 this season.

Benning was brought to Vancouver to get the draft right and if others at Rogers Arena start saying “wait, we could have had a Nylander-Tkachuk line – right now – and instead we have Virtanen in the minors and Juolevi still years away?” well, I don’t like his chances.

It would be some irony if the team making the right pick is the thing that creates the most problems for the GM.

BEST FAITH

Sven Baertschi is going to score. And he’s going to have more nights like tonight.

The guy went into tonight’s game with a 3.2% shooting percentage and has been up over 11% for his career. Think with logic.

Things are going to turn for him.

He has actually been producing more individual even strength scoring chances this season than last.

(His scoring chance rate at 3.20-per-hr through is up from 2.65).

Yes, Baertschi has choked on nearly all of those scoring chances, and has looked far too much like the bad MayRay and has not taken the next leap forward so many envisioned for him heading into the season.

It has to be pointed out, he is in his second year and like Hutton, and like Horvat and and like others, the sophomore slump can feel like a real thing.

It has led to some suggesting no one would trade a second for him today and he’s the player the Canucks should expose in the expansion draft.

I’d slow the roll on that.

Thing is, he one of the few players on the roster with creativity and offensive awareness which he combines with some pretty good defensive instincts, and you saw that on the third goal.

Are the Canucks really in position to risk losing any young players with upside because they refused to trade Jannik Hansen at the deadline?

Plus this: I heard about this certain guy, let’s call him “he who I am not allowed to name anymore,” on this certain radio station who didn’t think much of Baertschi.

That right there makes me 4-Baertschi-4-life.

BEST DOUBLING DOWN

Linden on Aquilinis: There's been so many ridiculous reports on them not letting us do our thing. But they've been great

It would now be officially awkward if he were to step down and there was a story which suggested ownership was an issue, wouldn’t it?

BEST MAKES YOU THINK

BEST WHAT IF

It is the rallying cry of the 2016-17 Canucks.

Structure, structure, structure.

Some read it as a renewed commitment to sound defensive play, others will be quick to point out the Canucks are intentionally playing passive hockey which most of the season has meant wait till the other team scores the first one, or in many cases the first two.

Then it’s time to change things up.

If they’re up two goals, well you saw what happened versus Chicago.

As the Sedins have explained countless times this year, it has been drilled deep into this team’s collective consciousness that this can be the only way it wants to win games and “compete for a wild card spot.”

They must wait for the other team to make a mistake and exploit it.

Many agree, of course. The Canucks, they’ll tell you, are helpless to play any other way. It’s current lineup problems, as this guy named, or having a, “mid-life crisis” sarcastically points out:

It wasn’t always thus.

As the front office has eagerly pointed out, it was their idea for the team to play with “more structure.” This

But what if they’re wrong? What if Desjardins was actually getting more out of the group the first two years he was coaching them, before he was asked to alter the equation of the way the team played?

Consider their lineup during the Flames playoff series, and this is how it looked heading into Game 3.

D. Sedin – H. Sedin – Burrows

Higgins – Bonino – Vrbata

Kenins – Horvat – Hansen

Matthias – Richardson – Dorsett

Edler – Tanev

Hamhuis – Weber

Bieksa – Sbisa

Lack

Is that team significantly more talented than the healthy version of this year’s team?

It does have a pretty good fourth line, but these current Canucks should have a more mobile defence, better goaltending and a vastly improved Horvat.

Eriksson could be an upgrade on Vrbata, meanwhile Higgins and Kenins weren’t NHL players for much longer after this game.

Let’s say, if the Canucks ever get healthy, you roll out these lines:

Sedins-Hansen

Eriksson-Horvat-Baertschi

Burrows-Sutter-Granlund

whomever-Gaunce-Dorsett

hutton-tanev

edler-stecher

tryamkin-gudbranson

Does this group have the potential — if it has a healthy Anton Rodin playing and Troy Stecher in the lineup instead of Luca Sbisa when Tanev is back — to be more dangerous offensively than the Canucks team we saw in the 2015 playoffs?

Also interesting to consider, what if the structure they love so much is restricting traditional offensive stat lines which in turn is creating a negative drag on trade value of certain veterans who the team would otherwise move?

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.

Almost Done!

Postmedia wants to improve your reading experience as well as share the best deals and promotions from our advertisers with you. The information below will be used to optimize the content and make ads across the network more relevant to you. You can always change the information you share with us by editing your profile.

By clicking "Create Account", I hearby grant permission to Postmedia to use my account information to create my account.

I also accept and agree to be bound by Postmedia's Terms and Conditions with respect to my use of the Site and I have read and understand Postmedia's Privacy Statement. I consent to the collection, use, maintenance, and disclosure of my information in accordance with the Postmedia's Privacy Policy.

Postmedia wants to improve your reading experience as well as share the best deals and promotions from our advertisers with you. The information below will be used to optimize the content and make ads across the network more relevant to you. You can always change the information you share with us by editing your profile.

By clicking "Create Account", I hearby grant permission to Postmedia to use my account information to create my account.

I also accept and agree to be bound by Postmedia's Terms and Conditions with respect to my use of the Site and I have read and understand Postmedia's Privacy Statement. I consent to the collection, use, maintenance, and disclosure of my information in accordance with the Postmedia's Privacy Policy.